Pickle protesters

Union ghts against use of nonunion farm labor

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) Raised in the potato and strawberry fields of northwestern Ohio, Baldemar Velasquez has been fighting for the rights of migrant workers for more than 30 years.

He led a seven-year boycott of Campbell Soup Co. that transformed workers from sharecroppers to employees, giving them unemployment benefits, workers' compensation and Social Security.

Now Velasquez fears that not only his union but the whole fruit and vegetable industry in Ohio and Michigan are threatened because food producers can find less costly non-union labor in the South.

''They'll abandon this area,'' he said. ''It's about the survival of the industry and the growers here. We'd like to retain the industry.''

Velasquez and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee he leads have enlisted labor unions, churches and minority organizations in a boycott of the Mount Olive Pickle Co. the South's largest pickle producer.

The company says it's an unfair tactic because farmers are the ones hiring the farm workers.

The farm workers union wants Mount Olive to sign contracts with its cucumber pickers, most of whom are temporary workers from Mexico and Central America. The union says the workers are forced to live in unsafe homes, exposed to dangerous pesticides and get cheated on pay and benefits.

If the boycott isn't successful, the union believes that companies such as Campbell, Heinz and Vlasic also will look to the South, which is considered non-union territory.

Each spring, hundreds of migrant workers come to the cucumber patches that are mixed in with the rows of corn and soybeans in northwestern Ohio and southeastern Michigan.

The two states are among the top five in cucumber production. Ohio's crop brings in $12.2 million a year.

The union has contracts with 50 growers in Ohio and 11 in southeastern Michigan. It's not affiliated with the better-known United Farm Workers, but the two unions have a history of working together.

Success came slow for the union in its early years. During the boycott against Campbell Soup in the 1980s, it took years before a church or labor group would pledge support.

Now as the boycott against Mount Olive begins, the union is counting on its old allies for support.

''We're not starting from scratch. We know a whole lot more about running a boycott and putting pressure on our allies,'' said union spokesman Mike Ferner.